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Rh Terrible! terrible in those days! Men and women, tied down to a cart (tumbril), were hurried along the streets to the place of execution. Down clanked the axe, and the head of a victim rolled into the corbeille. The joy of the jealous, black calumnies, devilry, the hatred of cowards, the rage and stupidity of the masses, these were the feelings of men in the year 1794—and they triumphed.

Lavoisier asked for a short time to complete a research in which he was engaged, but Coffinhal (President of the Revolutionary Tribunal) remarked that "la République n'a pas besoin de savants; il faut que la justice suivre son cours."

On 8th May 1794, the immortal Lavoisier was guillotined in the fifty-first year of his age. Calm and resigned, he met his death without flinching, without demonstration, knowing that he had done his duty both to the State and to Science.

Lavoisier was President of the Académie, and a deputation of its members penetrated the prison and placed wreaths on his grave in the Conciergerie. The name of "Lavoisier" required no embellishment, nor was the sculptor's art needed to perpetuate it in posterity.

As long as chemistry exists the name of "Lavoisier" will always be remembered as the creator of a new era in science; and as long as the human race is capable of